Battle lines were quickly drawn within the GOP after President Trump wavered on his prior stance on Edward Snowden being a traitor worthy of the death penalty, announcing that he is now considering a pardon for the fugitive living in Russia.
“I’m not that aware of the Snowden situation, but I’m going to start looking at it,” Trump said after being asked about a possible pardon during a Friday press conference. “There are many, many people — it seems to be a split decision — there are many people who think that he should be somehow treated differently and other people think he did very bad things — and I’m going to take a very good look at it.”
Snowden, 37, worked at the CIA prior to a stint as a contractor for the National Security Agency. In 2013, he left his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, flew to Hong Kong, and disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists. Snowden revealed not just domestic surveillance programs but also exposed national security operations conducted around the world by the United States and its allies, including against terrorists and adversaries such as China. Snowden, granted asylum by Russia and living in Moscow, was charged with violating the Espionage Act.
The speculation about a pardon was sparked by a New York Post interview Thursday, in which Trump said, ”There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly.”
“I’m one of them,” Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, quickly tweeted out. “@Snowden revealed that Trump-haters [Obama Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and [FBI Director James] Comey among others were illegally spying on Americans. Clapper lied to Congress about it. @realDonaldTrump should pardon Snowden!”
Trump has tweeted about Snowden at least 44 times, repeatedly calling the leaker a “traitor” and a “spy” who had done “tremendous damage to our country” as he lamented that “we are being embarrassed by Russia and China on Snowden.” In April 2014, Trump tweeted, “A spy in the old days, when our country was respected and strong, would be executed.” In May 2015, the future president said: “Snowden is a traitor and a disgrace… He is a coward who should come back & face justice.”
Most GOP lawmakers who have spoken out about Snowden over the past few days discouraged Trump from committing to his apparent change of heart.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the congressional representative for Wyoming who has clashed with Trump on a number of foreign policy issues, condemned Snowden over the weekend. “Edward Snowden is a traitor, she said. “He is responsible for the largest and most damaging release of classified info in US history. He handed over US secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence putting our troops and our nation at risk. Pardoning him would be unconscionable.”
Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin called Snowden a “traitor.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally to the president, also described Snowden’s actions as “treasonous.”
“I’m confident President Trump understands the crimes committed by Snowden resulted in American forces — and those who assisted us throughout the world — being placed in greater danger. Specifically, information released by Snowden jeopardized operations in Iraq & Afghanistan,” the South Carolina Republican tweeted Monday. “To those who suggest a pardon of Edward Snowden for his treasonous acts, you are doing a great disservice to those who suffered from his betrayal of his nation.”
Snowden, too, reacted to the chatter concerning a possible pardon.
“Imagine my surprise to find only the worst people in the country willing to speak against a pardon this time around,” Snowden tweeted Monday. “How far we’ve come!”
The House Intelligence Committee, which released a heavily redacted, 36-page report on Snowden in September 2016, argued Snowden “was not a whistleblower” and “was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator.”
“Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries,” the HPSCI report stated. “He handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states. Some of Snowden’s disclosures exacerbated and accelerated existing tends that diminished the IC’s capabilities to collect against legitimate foreign intelligence targets.”
The report also cast doubt on Snowden’s timeline of events: “Two weeks before Snowden began mass downloads of classified documents, he was reprimanded after engaging in a workplace spat with NSA managers … Despite Snowden’s later claim that the March 2013 congressional testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was a ‘breaking point’ for him, these mass downloads predated Director Clapper’s testimony by eight months.”
The report said that “in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee publicly conceded that ‘Snowden did share intelligence’ with his government.” Snowden also gave a 2013 interview to the South China Morning Post while hiding out in Hong Kong, revealing alleged details about U.S. surveillance of China, claiming that “we hack network backbones … that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers.” Snowden also claimed that “the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data” and claimed U.S. spies hacked Chinese universities.
The intelligence committee sent a bipartisan letter to then-President Barack Obama, saying, “We urge you not to pardon Edward Snowden, who perpetrated the largest and most damaging public disclosure of classified information in our nation’s history … He took the material to China and Russia — two regimes that routinely violate their citizens, privacy and civil liberties.”
Among the signatories were current Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff, Republican ranking member Devin Nunes of California, and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is a former member of the House.
In December 2019, a federal judge ruled that Snowden broke his nondisclosure agreements when he didn’t submit for review the manuscript of his Permanent Record, and the judge ordered all the book sale proceeds to be turned over to the U.S. government.
A federal court filing from Friday revealed Snowden earned $1,255,800 in speaker’s fees between September 2015 and May 2020, according to the American Program Bureau, which handled his speaking engagements. The largest sum Snowden received was $50,000 from CLSA, a capital markets investment group headquartered in Hong Kong. He also earned $35,000 from the Piston ad agency in Kuwait, $32,000 from Associacao Turismo de Cascais, which promotes Portuguese tourism, and tens of thousands of dollars from a host of U.S. and Canadian universities.
“I hope Edward Snowden enjoys the money he is making in Russia,” Graham said Monday. “And if he ever does step foot in the United States again, he should immediately be tried for his crimes against our country.”
